In the present work, we develop a causal theory of relativistic non-ideal fluids up to the second order in the Eckart frame using gradient expansion scheme. Keeping the spirit of Mueller-Israel-Stewart formalism, the general forms of bulk viscosity, shear viscosity tensor and the heat flow vector are presented. Since each of the flux quantities explicitly carry curvature terms, we show that our formalism finds application in astrophysics in particular in the strong gravity regime. We elucidate two such applications namely in viscous thick accretion disks also known as Polish doughnuts and in addressing non-rotating equilibrium configuration, like neutron stars.
We consider cosmological scenarios originating from a single imperfect fluid with bulk viscosity and apply Eckart's and both the full and the truncated Müller-Israel-Stewart's theories as descriptions of the non-equilibrium processes. Our principal objective is to investigate if the dynamical properties of Dark Matter and Dark Energy can be described by a single viscous fluid and how such description changes when a causal theory (Müller-Israel-Stewart's, both in its full and truncated forms) is taken into account instead of Eckart's non-causal theory. To this purpose, we find numerical solutio…
It is shown that the coupling of heat with acceleration first proposed by Eckart would have an overwhelming effect in the growth of density mass fluctuations, even in non-relativistic fluids in the presence of a gravitational field. Gravitational effects would be negligible if the heat-acceleration relation is assumed to be valid for the hydrodynamic equations. A direct implication of this result is that recent alternative first order in the gradients theories must be taken into account while describing a special relativistic fluid.
Evolution of the bulk viscous matter dominated universe has been analysed using the full causal, Israel-Stewart theory for the evolution of bulk viscous pressure in the context of recent acceleration of the universe. The form of bulk viscosity is taken as $ξ=αρ^{1/2}. $ We obtained analytical solutions for the Hubble parameter and scale factor of the universe. The model parameters have been computed using the Type Ia supernovae observational data. The evolution of the prominent cosmological parameters were obtained. The age of the universe for the best estimated model parameters is found to be…
This work applies a Rayleigh-Brillouin light spectrum analysis in order to establish a causality test by means of a frequency cone. This technique allows to identify forbidden and unforbidden regions in light scattering experiments and establishes if a set of linearized transport equations admits causal solutions. It is shown that, when studying a relativistic fluid with its acoustic modes interacting with light, Eckart's formalism yields a non causal behavior. In this case the solutions describing temperature, density and pressure fluctuations are located outside the frequency cone. In contra…
Effective theory arguments are used to derive the most general energy-momentum tensor of a relativistic viscous fluid with an arbitrary equation of state (in the absence of other conserved currents) that is first-order in the derivatives of the energy density and flow velocity and does not include extended variables such as in Mueller-Israel-Stewart-like theories. This energy-momentum tensor leads to a causal theory, provided one abandons the usual conventions for the out-of-equilibrium hydrodynamic variables put forward by Landau-Lifshitz and Eckart. In particular, causality requires nonzero …
The problem of structure formation in relativistic dissipative fluids was analyzed in a previous work within Eckart's framework, in which the heat flux is coupled to the hydrodynamic acceleration, additional to the usual temperature gradient term. It was shown that in such case, the pathological behavior of fluctuations leads to the disapperance of the gravitational instability responsible for structure formation. In the present work the problem is revisited now using a constitutive equation derived from relativistic kinetic theory. The new relation, in which the heat flux is not coupled to th…
The effects of bulk viscosity are examined for inflationary dynamics in which dissipation and thermalization are present. A complete stability analysis is done for the background inflaton evolution equations, which includes both inflaton dissipation and radiation bulk viscous effects. Three representative approaches of bulk viscous irreversible thermodynamics are analyzed: the Eckart noncausal theory, the linear and causal theory of Israel-Stewart and a more recent nonlinear and causal bulk viscous theory. It is found that the causal theories allow for larger bulk viscosities before encounteri…
The inclusion of dissipative effects in cosmic fluids modifies their clustering properties and could have observable effects on the formation of large scale structures. We analyse the evolution of density perturbations of cold dark matter endowed with causal bulk viscosity. The perturbative analysis is carried out in the Newtonian approximation and the bulk viscosity is described by the causal Israel-Stewart (IS) theory. In contrast to the non-causal Eckart theory, we obtain a third order evolution equation for the density contrast that depends on three free parameters. For certain parameter v…
The post-Newtonian hydrodynamic equations for a non-perfect fluid are developed within the framework of a post-Newtonian Boltzmann equation. The post-Newtonian components of the energy-momentum tensor are determined by considering the relativistic Eckart decomposition for a viscous and heat conducting fluid. From the relativistic Grad distribution function its post-Newtonian expression is derived. The hydrodynamic equations for the mass density, mass-energy density and momentum density are determined from a post-Newtonian transfer equation and Grad's distribution function. In the non-relativis…
In this note, we investigate linear instabilities of hydrodynamics with corrections up to first order in derivatives. It has long been known that relativistic (Lorentzian) first order hydrodynamics, with positive local entropy production, exhibits unphysical instabilities. We extend this analysis to fluids with Galilean and Carrollian boost symmetries. We find that the instabilities occur in all cases, except for fluids with Galilean boost symmetry combined with the choice of macroscopic variables called Eckart frame. We also present a complete linearised analysis of the full spectrum of first…
We present the first numerical analysis of causal, stable first-order relativistic hydrodynamics with ideal gas microphysics, based in the formalism developed by Bemfica, Disconzi, Noronha, and Kovtun (BDNK theory). The BDNK approach provides definitions for the conserved stress-energy tensor and baryon current, and rigorously proves causality, local well-posedness, strong hyperbolicity, and linear stability (about equilibrium) for the equations of motion, subject to a set of coupled nonlinear inequalities involving the undetermined model coefficients (the choice for which defines the "hydrody…
It is shown that the so-called generic instabilities that appear in the framework of relativistic linear irreversible thermodynamics, describing the fluctuations of a simple fluid close to equilibrium, arise due to the coupling of heat with hydrodynamic acceleration which appears in Eckart's formalism of relativistic irreversible thermodynamics. Further, we emphasize that such behavior should be interpreted as a contradiction to the postulates of linear irreversible thermodynamics (LIT), namely a violation of Onsager's hypothesis on the regression of fluctuations, and not as fluid instabilitie…
We set up a general framework for systematically building and classifying, in the linear regime, causal and stable dissipative hydrodynamic theories that, alongside with the usual hydrodynamic modes, also allow for an arbitrary number of non-hydrodynamic modes with complex dispersion relation (such theories are often referred to as "quasi-hydrodynamic"). To increase the number of non-hydrodynamic modes one needs to add more effective fields to the model. The system of equations governing this class of quasi-hydrodynamic theories is symmetric hyperbolic, thermodynamically consistent (i.e. the e…
In this paper we calculate the Rayleigh-Brillouin spectrum for a relativistic simple fluid according to three different versions available for a relativistic approach to non-equilibrium thermodynamics. An outcome of these calculations is that Eckart's version predicts that such spectrum does not exist. This provides an argument to question its validity. The remaining two results, which differ one from another, do provide a finite form for such spectrum. This raises the rather intriguing question as to which of the two theories is a better candidate to be taken as a possible version of relativi…
Relativistic Navier-Stokes equations express the conservation of the energy-momentum tensor and the particle number current in terms of the local hydrodynamic variables: temperature, fluid velocity, and the chemical potential. We show that the viscous-fluid equations are stable and causal if one adopts suitable non-equilibrium definitions of the hydrodynamic variables.
We propose a new theory of second-order viscous relativistic hydrodynamics which does not impose any frame conditions on the choice of the hydrodynamic variables. It differs from Mueller-Israel-Stewart theory by including additional transient degrees of freedom, and its first-order truncation reduces to Bemfica-Disconzi-Noronha-Kovtun theory. Conditions for causality and stability are explicitly given in the conformal regime. As an illustrative example, we consider Bjorken flow solutions to our equations and identify variables which make a hydrodynamic attractor manifest.
We formulate the theory of first-order dissipative magnetohydrodynamics in an arbitrary hydrodynamic frame under the assumption of parity-invariance and discrete charge symmetry. We study the mode spectrum of Alfvén and magnetosonic waves as well as the spectrum of gapped excitations and derive constraints on the transport coefficients such that generic equilibrium states with constant magnetic fields are stable and causal under linearised perturbations. We solve these constraints for a specific equation of state and show that there exists a large family of hydrodynamic frames that renders the…
The stability conditions of a relativistic hydrodynamic theory can be derived directly from the requirement that the entropy should be maximised in equilibrium. Here we use a simple geometrical argument to prove that, if the hydrodynamic theory is stable according to this entropic criterion, then localised perturbations to the equilibrium state cannot propagate outside their future light-cone. In other words, within relativistic hydrodynamics, acausal theories must be thermodynamically unstable, at least close to equilibrium. We show that the physical origin of this deep connection between sta…
The equations governing dissipative relativistic hydrodynamics are formulated within the 3+1 approach for arbitrary spacetimes. Dissipation is accounted for by applying the theory of extended causal thermodynamics (Israel-Stewart theory). This description eliminates the causality violating infinite signal speeds present in the conventional Navier-Stokes equation. As an example we treat the astrophysically relevant case of stationary and axisymmetric spacetimes, including the Kerr metric. The equations take a simpler form whenever the inertia due to the dissipative contributions can be neglecte…
A new approach is described to help improve the foundations of relativistic viscous fluid dynamics and its coupling to general relativity. Focusing on neutral conformal fluids constructed solely in terms of hydrodynamic variables, we derive the most general viscous energy-momentum tensor yielding equations of motion of second order in the derivatives, which is shown to provide a novel type of generalization of the relativistic Navier-Stokes equations for which causality holds. We show how this energy-momentum tensor may be derived from conformal kinetic theory. We rigorously prove existence, u…
Extended theories are widely used in the literature to describe the relativistic fluid. The motivation for this is mostly due to the causality issues allegedly present in the first order theories. However, the decay of fluctuations in the system is also at stake when first order theories \emph{that couple heat with acceleration} are used. In this paper it is shown how the generic instabilities in relativistic fluids are not present when a Maxwell-Cattaneo type law is introduced in the system of hydrodynamic equations. Emphasis is made on the fact that the stabilization is only due to the diffe…
The relativistic hydrodynamic system of equations for a perfect fluid obeying a causal equation of state is hyperbolic (Anile 1989 {\it Relativistic Fluids and Magneto-Fluids} (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)). In this report, we derive the conditions for this system to be convex in terms of the fundamental derivative of the equation of state (Menikoff and Plohr 1989 {\it Rev. Mod. Phys.} {\bf 61} 75). The classical limit is recovered.
The Einstein's field equations of Friedmann-Robertson-Walker universes filled with a dissipative fluid described by both the {\em truncated} and {\em non-truncated} causal transport equations are analyzed using techniques from dynamical systems theory. The equations of state, as well as the phase space, are different from those used in the recent literature. In the de Sitter expansion both the hydrodynamic approximation and the non-thermalizing condition can be fulfilled simultaneously. For $Λ=0$ these expansions turn out to be stable provided a certain parameter of the fluid is lower than 1/2…
